Context

All final semester students at the Indian Institute of Art & Design are expected to undertake an independently driven 16-week long graduation project. To meet this requirement, I worked with Science Gallery Bengaluru as part of their inaugral Xperimenters programme, and developed a web-game that was showcased as part of their virtual exhibition PSYCHE.

Process

During the programme, Jahnavi Phalkey broke down the meaning of science for us: one of the many socially accepted systems of knowledge based on certain axioms. By considering science as simply a means to answer people’s questions, I decided to ask 12 Indian young adults what they would like answers to.

A thematic clustering of 72 questions given by these young adults pointed towards a looming existential theme: why do we do what we do and what is the point of it all?

I set out to try and bring about some sort of existential peace, by looking for answers to the same question in different branches of science: philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, biology, etc. While doing this, I came to realise that human end-goals or ‘purposes’ are primarily subjective, largely dependent on a person’s lived experience. However, a more fruitful & objective search would be to answer why human beings think about an end-goal after all. This led me to a specific branch in human psychology: human motivation, right from A.H Maslow in 1984 to the more recent Max-Neef in 2010.

Interestingly, my research suggested that most human motivation theories after the Theory of Human Needs (A.H. Maslow, 1984), were either extensions or refutations of the same. This made Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs a pioneering theory in the study of human motivation.

When I looked at the hierarchy, a certain resemblance to video games could be seen. Pass the conditions of one level (or hierarchy) to reach the next one, with the promise of increased rewards, but with more effort required to get them each time. I loved that human life could be broken down into such a bare system of input (effort) & output (satisfaction), all to reach the last stage: self-actualisation (making the most out of one’s creative potential by doing everything that they are most fitted to do).

This last hierarchy was the most interesting one of them all because of its inescapability. No breathing human can ever truly self actualise, for there is never a limit to creative fulfilment. Yet, Maslow believed that human beings live all their lives to try and fulfil the requirements of this hierarchy, which is arguably a futile effort.

My interpretation of this need was that this can never be fulfilled and, therefore, can be seen as an inescapable level (or hierarchy). There is nothing that exists beyond it because there is no limit for creative fulfilment. One can always do more. This sat well with an ending for my game (as well as for human life), people trying to self-actualise but never actually being able to, until death strikes them randomly one day.

Logic + Programming

The game had 5 stages for a digital particle to progress through. Players woke up as a digital particle (suddenly being given ‘life’) in a dark space. Movement of the particle was controlled through the p5.js lerp() function. Move the mouse somewhere, and the particle slowly moves there.

heroPosition = lerp(initialPosition, newPosition, amountOfInterpolation);

The first stage (or level) was physiological needs. This was interpreted as simply regaining the energy that the particle expends by breathing & moving. Food was created at different intervals of time, and the particle must be moved close to the food source for it to eat the food (much like the real world).

class Food {
objectProperties{
size, colour, position
}

eatenStatus{
if (eaten==true){
foodDoesNotExist();
}else {
foodExists();
}
}
}

Next was the stage of safety. Hostile particles flew in from random places at random speeds and a collision detection algorithm was used to recognise whether the hero particle successfully steered away from them or not. If not, the particle would die.

d = distance between heroObject and hostile particle [i]
if (d heroObject dies){
}else {
heroObject survives
}

The next stage was a complicated one to fit into a system of logic: belonging & need. I interpreted love (at the time) as companionship. In the lonely space, another similar looking particle appears and the hero particle must move in at a desirable speed to ‘connect’ with the other particle (used velocity to program ‘consent’).

//Free moving companion object

if (companionObject.x<0 | companionObject.x> width) companionObject.xSpeed =
companionObject.xSpeed * (-1)
if (companionObject.y<0 | companionObject.y> height) companionObject.ySpeed =
companionObject.ySpeed * (-1)

//Calculating whether the heroObject is moving towards the companion or not

detectMouse(){
if (mouseX < companion.x + companion.r/2 + leeway)&
(mouseX > companion.x - companion.r / 2 - leeway) &
(mouseY < companion.y + companion.r / 2 + leeway) &
(mouseY > companion.y - companion.r / 2 - leeway){
mouseOnTarget = true;
} else {
mouseOnTarget = false;
}
}

If a player made it till this point in the game, they had progressed through the Hierarchy of Human Needs in a linear fashion, one after the other. However, life is rarely like that. I programmed a shortage of food and the arrival of more hostile particles at this juncture. Once conditions were stable again, the hero particle was suddenly zoomed out into the grander universe where other similar particles existed. The hero particle now had to connect with the others (make friends) and take care of them (fulfilling esteem needs). At this point, the game became an autonomous system (friends moved independently, ate food and could also die from starvation).

for (let i =0; i for (let j = 0; j if (food[j].contains(friendPosition[i])))){
friend[j].radius = friend[j].radius + food[i].radius;
food.remove (i);
}

Finally, the hero particle reaches the level where it can self-actualise. After all, that’s what it’s been about, reaching this stage where the grand question of life can be answered and it can finally see what’s on the other side. However, at this stage, an algorithm (death) kicks in which has a 70% chance of the particle dying unexpectedly every frame (60 times in a second on most computer screens).

Impact

The game was played by a total of 121 unique people in the first month of its launch. Through the virtual workshops, 49 young adults questioned human needs, happiness and the purpose of life. Here are some things they said in my workshops:

• “The experience of the game felt meditative and brought about a rather primal human desire from within me.”

• “I later realised that we don’t have to eat all the food available and I was able to survive for longer. Interesting how this correlates with the concept of greed.”

• “Love how the game has been able to start very different conversations!”

• “Learning to code really does empower you in more ways than one.”

• “Coding does not seem to be as hard as I thought it would be.”

The founding director of the gallery said:

• “It’s not the numbers but the quality of engagement that matters. Impact one person’s life, but do it well.”